


That I Could Travel Light

by kres



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-05
Updated: 2007-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:35:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kres/pseuds/kres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amnesia fic. And then again, not really.</p><p>[originally posted at kres.livejournal.com]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sleeping in a Coil

**Author's Note:**

> **Context:** "Born Under a Bad Sign", aftermath of sorts.  
>  **Beta:** Many thanks to my LJ friends: the awesome coiledsoul, the incredibly patient paian and the most insightful ggreenapple. All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Originally published on livejournal on 2007-04-05 under <http://kres.livejournal.com/168675.html>.

It begins with water.

In the darkness, he discovers, there is not much else to hold on to, except for the insistent trickle down the back of his neck, cold rivulets running along his right arm and down to the tips of his fingers. His t-shirt is soaked and heavy, and it clings to his body like a dead skin, peeling off. His hair is a thick, wet cap on top of his skull, cold strands curling behind his ears and itching at the line of his eyebrows. His left arm—

He can’t feel his left arm.

He tries not to move, afraid of the pain that might follow, and instead he concentrates on discovering the shape of the rest of his body. It comes to him in stages – the strange twist of his spine, compressing the rest of him into a coiled, near-fetal position; the bent cranes of his legs, caught and constrained in the darkness by more than just gravity; the jut of his right hipbone, scraping against something raw with every slow rise and fall of his chest; and finally, the curve of his left arm, curled under him and pressed to his side, supporting his ribcage like a numb cushion.

He breathes deeper – the air is humid and stifling, and it smells of years-old mildew, rusty pipes and vaguely of rot. Garden smells, basement smells, the smells of an old house. He recognizes them, but can’t put them in context, doesn’t know where they came from or how he came to know them. There is still no pain, only an odd sense of displacement: he doesn’t remember how he got here, only that there was something he was supposed to do.

There is a rumble from somewhere above him, and a faint sound of a human voice. He can’t distinguish the actual words, but recognizes the tone – alarmed or upset, maybe angry. He doesn’t know if they’ve come to rescue him, or to finish him off. He’s not afraid, though – whoever they are, he knows he can take them. He can take anyone.

Slowly, the pressure of the dark shapes around him changes, and he can hear something crack. There is no pain, so it wasn’t a bone, but on the heels of the sound comes a slow surge of adrenaline – his body is reacting of its own accord. He tries to slow down the quickening beat of his heart, keep his breathing quiet; undetected, he is safe in his cavern of darkness and water and cold. Maybe whoever is out there will eventually tire of their search and go away.

There is a louder crack, right above his head, and then the pressure on his body is lifted, the darkness recedes a little, and he blinks up into a clear, evening sky, with a black ridge of broken shapes on its edges – the walls of a house, he realizes, crushed and fallen around him. He can see shattered pieces of wood and drywall, water trickling down from the cracked pipes right beside his face. And above him, holding a crowbar in one hand, is a man he doesn’t recognize.

“Sam,” the man says, visibly sagging, as if the weight he’s just lifted has been placed on his own shoulders. “Are you okay?” He doesn’t stop to hear the answer, just throws the crowbar onto the rubble beside him and begins digging with his bare hands. “Hold on, man. I’m gonna get you out of there. Just hold on.”

Sam nods, and lets his head fall back in relief. Not an enemy, then. Good. It means they don’t have to fight. He doesn’t trust himself to say anything yet – what if the man hears his voice and realizes he was mistaken, that they in fact don’t know each other at all? He might stop digging and go away, leaving Sam out here to die.

Sam doesn’t want to die. He knows that as well as he knows his own heartbeat, finally slowing now that his body has caught up to the fact that he’s not in danger. He doesn’t know anything else, only that he’s alive and he’ll do anything to stay that way.

He closes his eyes and waits for the other man to dig him out of the rubble.


	2. Stranger to These Parts

The man has a car – an old, black, four-door Chevrolet – parked in the abandoned driveway of the ruined house, beside a rusty frame of a red pickup truck. There’s a sawed-off shotgun lying in the front seat of the Chevy – it startles Sam, but his rescuer doesn’t notice.

“Come on.” The man holds the passenger door open, and closes it gently after Sam has folded himself onto his side of the bench seat. Sam’s legs are still not working properly – he was able to limp back from the house, his weight supported on the other man’s shoulders, but he doubts he’d be able to walk on his own, much less run, if it came down to it.

The man gets behind the wheel, but doesn’t start the engine. Instead he looks at Sam – and Sam thinks he can feel the scrutiny down to his bones – and after a moment he peels off his leather jacket and hands it to Sam. “Here.” The jacket is soft to the touch, the inside of it warm from the man’s body heat, and Sam realizes he’s been shivering in his damp clothes for a while. He accepts the jacket – it’s a few sizes too small, but big enough for Sam to wrap around his shoulders.

“Where’s the rest of your clothes, anyway?” The man turns the key in the ignition and the car shudders to life – a deep, rumbling sound Sam finds oddly comforting. He looks over, but again, the man doesn’t look like he’s waiting for an answer, so Sam doesn’t say anything.

They circle around the rusted pickup and then back towards the line of the trees, a narrow access road leading to an empty two-lane highway. There are no lights on the horizon, only the forest quiet and dark on both sides, the headlights of the car chasing away shadows. The man drives with a sense of purpose, as if he knows these roads like the back of his own hand, so Sam lets himself relax a little, still wary of the shotgun lying on the seat between them. He wonders if it’s loaded. He wonders how heavy it would be in his hands. He wonders how fast he could reach for it—

“So, you wanna tell me what happened?”

He flinches, adrenaline surging again, as if he’d been caught in the act of reaching for the weapon, even though his fingers haven’t moved. The man glances at him, then turns his eyes back to the road.

“Sam?” he says, after a while, but Sam still can’t shape his mouth into appropriate words. What should he say? _Thanks for the rescue, man, but who the hell are you?_ His companion might decide to reach for the shotgun, and that would be the end of it.

“Sam,” the man repeats, quiet and insistent, and glances at him again. Sam shakes his head, desperately hoping that it will do instead of an actual conversation. He edges a little closer to the door, to the cold air and the dark forest whipping by on the other side of the window.

The silence in the car stretches for a while. Finally, the man shrugs. “Fine,” he says. “You don’t wanna talk, don’t talk. But dude, next time you flip out and bring a house down on our heads, don’t expect me to come runnin’ to save your ungrateful ass.” Then he reaches for the radio and turns a switch.

Harsh, angry music erupts from the speakers, startling Sam into another flinch. Behind the wheel, his companion flashes a quick, satisfied grin and focuses his attention back on the road.

They keep driving, and after a while Sam relaxes enough to lean carefully back in the seat and close his eyes. The music blares, loud and obnoxious, but at least for the moment, Sam is safe.

*****

“So, I guess the werewolf in Washington is out of the question.”

Sam turns his head from the motel room window and freezes in his chair by the small, wobbly motel table.

His rescuer – Sam still doesn’t know his name; before they checked in, he watched the man rifle through a stack of credit cards, each with a different name on it, only to pick one seemingly at random – is watching him along an empty barrel of a gun. He slowly inspects the weapon, then lays it beside him on the bed and picks up a large hunting knife, turns it in his hand. The blade reflects the sharp overhead light. Sam finds the glimmer of the metal hypnotizing.

He swallows, watching the knife. “I guess,” he says carefully. He wonders if this show of weaponry is supposed to be a threat, or maybe some sort of test. Maybe he should be more afraid, maybe he should say something else.

Or maybe the other man is just taunting him. Maybe he already knows that Sam is not really Sam.

But the man only nods, his attention focused solely on the blade. He remains silent, and doesn’t look like he’s about to ask any more questions, so Sam cautiously returns to looking out of the window.

Outside, their car is the only one in the small parking lot; in the distance, other cars swish past on the highway, not even bothering to slow down by this small cluster of buildings in the middle of nowhere. The grocery store by the motel is closed, the lights of the gas station next to it are dim, uninviting. There is a town nearby, the soft aura of lights reflecting against the clouds overhead. 

The night is quiet, uneventful, and Sam wonders how long it will take for his companion to go to sleep, so he can leave without attracting too much attention.

He contemplated running when they first stopped by the motel. The man muttered something about dinner and went to get them a room, leaving Sam alone in the car.

The shotgun was still on the seat. Sam looked at it for a little while. He didn’t reach out to touch it.

He stayed – his legs still felt weak, and the mention of food made him realize how hungry he was. How long had it been since he’d eaten? Hours? Days? He didn’t remember.

The dinner consisted of soft, reheated fries and greasy burgers. Sam cleaned his plate quickly, wolfing down the fries and almost inhaling the burger. He had noted the curious expression the other man gave him before biting into his own meal, and it had stopped him for a moment – apparently something else was expected of him – but he had been too exhausted and hungry to care; his stomach had felt like it had been empty for weeks.

The man didn’t say anything then, and after they went back to the room, he brought a duffel bag from the trunk of the car, spread what looked like a small arsenal on the bed and began cleaning the weapons without another word, leaving Sam to his own devices.

Until now.

Now apparently the respite is over: Sam can hear the bed rustling behind him, footsteps crossing the floor. Then the chair opposite him creaks and the man sits down, laying a gun on the table between them with a gentle clink. The threat is clear this time, but still subtle, considering – the barrel points towards the room, not towards Sam, not yet – but Sam feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end anyway.

The man isn’t looking at him, though, but down at his hand, where he is lightly tracing the shape of the gun with the tips of his fingers. His skin is pale, callused, his nails short and dirty. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” he says quietly. “Or should I start checking if it’s really you in there?” The question is followed by a crooked smile and a wink, and Sam finds himself at a loss at the mixed signals the man is sending.

And then he can’t take it anymore. His body is vibrating with tension and his fingers are beginning to shake. The dinner he ate is a small, hard stone in the pit of his stomach. He flattens his hands on the table.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and closes his eyes. He can’t look at the gun, or the man’s bright, too-focused expression. He forces himself to speak, the words scratching his throat like gravel. “Look, I don’t… I don’t know you, okay? Just… don’t hurt me. Please.” The last word barely comes out; he has run out of breath.

They sit in silence for what seems like a very long time. Sam doesn’t open his eyes. He waits, coiled and tense, hyperaware of his surroundings: the other man’s distinct presence at the table, his quiet breathing, the silence where his fingers rest on the gun, the soft swoosh-swoosh of the cars outside, and, beneath it all, the sound his own heartbeat, loud in his ears.

And then the man laughs, short and unexpected.

“Dude, no fucking way.”

*******

Later, Sam will think fondly of this moment. A blank page of sorts, a time when things could have gone in many different directions, when he had the free will and nothing was predetermined.

Free will: now there’s a good joke.

*******

Dean.

Sam tastes the word in his mouth, tries it out between his lips. _Dean_. Simple. Soft.

And totally unfamiliar.

Dean, his _brother_.

His brother, who looks more amused than worried by the whole situation, and it makes Sam wonder if perhaps this kind of thing isn’t exactly new to either of them. His brother, with his raw display of weapons on the motel bed, the off-hand mention of a _werewolf_ , and the fact that he thinks it was Sam who _brought the building down on their heads_ , and is not surprised by it in the least – it all adds up to a rather odd picture in Sam’s head.

“Dean,” he says out loud. And then, because he can’t find anything else to say yet, “I’m sorry.”

Dean doesn’t look up. He is shuffling through an old notebook, yellowed and stained pages sticking out, bits and scraps of newspaper, bookmarks and pins. He looks irritated. “You should be,” he says. “Lost my freakin’ cell phone because of you. Where the hell is this thing…Ah!” He holds up a piece of paper that looks like it’s been torn from an old book. “Stay here.” And he’s moving towards the door.

Sam frowns. “Where are you going?”

“Gotta call someone.” Dean is halfway out of the room when he pauses, one foot on the doorstep. “Just stay here, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

As if Sam had anywhere else better to be at this point. He nods numbly, and Dean shoots him a quick, assessing glance, and disappears, leaving Sam alone in the shabby motel room.

Dean hadn’t told him much, and didn’t ask him much, either. Sam had braced himself for an interrogation that never came – his brother just sighed, gave him a long, pained look and scratched the back of his neck. ‘Dude, come on, man. I’m not telling you our goddamn life story.’ He paused, as if considering how long the story would be, then scowled even more. ‘You really don’t remember anything?’

Sam didn’t.

So he got the short version: they were on the road, between one job and another (Sam didn’t ask what kind of job it was, but by now he suspected), they stopped in an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, because Sam – the Sam from before – had apparently insisted a motel was too risky (‘we’re sort of famous, just not in the Hollywood kind of way’). The sun was still up when they went to sleep on makeshift beds under the leaking roof, both of them too exhausted to make any attempt at a dinner.

Dean woke up just after dark with his ears ringing and his mouth full of dust, to find Sam gone and a piece of the roof hanging inches from his face. He managed to dig himself out and searched the rubble until he found his brother. From the way Dean was cutting his sentences short, Sam could guess that the search had taken quite some time, and for a while there, it hadn’t looked good.

Sam thinks it’s a miracle they survived at all.

They weren’t crushed, and Sam isn’t even bruised – the chafe on his hipbone itches a little under the band-aid, but other than that, he is physically fine. Dean made him walk in a straight line across the room with his eyes closed, touch the tip of his nose and recite the alphabet backwards (three times). He looked like he was having fun, too, so Sam obliged without protest – he was too busy trying to keep the burger and fries from coming back up.

Dean is not hurt, either, or he doesn’t let on. Sam noticed a few old bruises on his face, but now he suspects that’s just a side effect of their job.

Whatever their job might be.

“Werewolves,” he says to himself, aloud. “Vampires. Demons.” The words ring oddly in the silence of the room, but Sam doesn’t find the shape of them unfamiliar in his mouth. “Shapeshifters,” he says. “Vengeful spirits.” There are more words where these came from. So he knows the vocabulary – he just can’t seem to find any context.

He thinks that should probably freak him out.

He suspects that even if he had the context, it still probably wouldn’t.

Dean flat-out refused to tell him anything else – about their history, the reasons they did what they did, their family or any other people they might have known. He insisted that it was better if Sam remembered that by himself. Otherwise, the memories and Dean’s story might mingle, and Sam would never be able to tell what was true and what was imagined.

Sam has the impression there is more to it than just that, and for the first time since they met he feels slightly annoyed with the other man – Dean seems all too comfortable with rationing the things Sam does and doesn’t need to know. As the only point of connection between Sam and the world, Dean probably feels like he is protecting his brother from whatever is out there, waiting to do him harm. Sam recognizes the compulsion – Dean is the leader of their little pack and he is responsible for both of them. Still, Sam would much rather be treated as an equal. He wonders if that was ever the case, before.

It’s already after midnight and the night is quiet, the traffic on the highway turned into barely a trickle. The sky has cleared now, and the air outside was warm and humid when they arrived at the motel. It looks like early spring, or late winter, Sam can’t really tell. Somehow it disturbs him more than the werewolves and vampires – the regular, day-to-day context of the time of year shouldn’t just be gone. The loss of the ability to place himself in the circle of seasons feels odd and deeply unnatural.

He is looking around for the remote to check the date on TV, when the door creaks and Dean comes back in. He is carrying two open bottles of beer and a pack of chips like armor in front of his chest. “Good news, Sammy,” he says with a quick, cheerful smile, one which Sam already suspects is completely fake. “Bobby thinks you fell and hit yourself on the head.”

Sam blinks, forgets about the remote. He watches Dean close the door and lock it behind him, then take a quick look out of the window. He recognizes the move – _instinct_ – and for a brief, crystal clear moment he feels like he’s being backed into a corner by something he doesn’t understand.

He forcibly shrugs off the feeling. The man is his _brother_.

“And that’s good news how?” he asks, shakily. He doesn’t ask who Bobby is. He suspects he should know.

“Well, it’s either that, or you’re possessed.” Dean smiles again, the corner of his mouth twitching unsteadily. He throws the bag of chips on the table, hands Sam a bottle. “Again.” He tips his beer towards Sam, takes a swig. “Watch out or you’re gonna make a habit of that, Sammy.”

Sam takes a careful sip and scowls - the beer tastes stale, like mildew and rusty old water. He takes another sip to see if it’s just his taste buds adjusting, but it doesn’t look like it. “What makes you think I’m not?” he asks, glancing at Dean as casually as he can.

Dean smirks, and it’s for real this time. His mouth is brushing the rim of his bottle. “I’m guessing I’d know… right about now.” For a moment he looks expectantly at Sam, and when Sam looks back, clueless, Dean downs half of his beer, sets the bottle hard on the table, and sits down to unlace his boots. The tension is gone from his body, snuffed out like it’s never been there. “Anyway,” he says, lightly, “it should pass in a couple of days. We’ll get some rest, drive around a little, maybe do a job. Something should kick-start your memory sooner or later. You got your charm?”

Sam blinks, runs Dean’s words in his mind a few times. Yes, apparently he heard that one correctly. “My what?”

“Your protection charm. From Bobby?”

Sam, of course, doesn’t remember getting any protection charms from anyone, but he checks around his neck and pats his pockets just in case. “Uh, no. I don’t think so.”

“Figures. Here.” Dean throws something at him, and Sam catches it by reflex – a small, metal pendant on a chain. “Put it on.”

Sam looks down at the pendant. It’s intricate, carefully sculpted. Looks and feels old, but as far as he can tell, he could buy stuff like this at a flea market any day. He runs his fingers along the links of the chain, then shrugs, fastens it around his neck and straightens, waiting. 

He doesn’t feel any different.

Dean has paused with his hands on the laces, and is watching him again, and Sam feels vaguely uncomfortable. Was there something he should have said? The chain is light around his neck – it doesn’t itch, doesn’t chafe. It doesn’t feel like anything.

Something occurs to him. “Don’t _you_ need one?”

Dean throws his boots under the bed near the door. “Nah. Demons don’t like me that much.” He stands up, unbuckles his belt, strips off his jeans and throws them onto the bed, next to the gallery of weapons. The he smiles lazily at Sam. “Now shapeshifters, _that’s_ a whole ‘nother story.” And with a wink, he disappears in the bathroom.

*******

Later, Sam will wish it had been that simple. A possession is something he could have fought, with graceful Latin formulas, a Devil’s Trap and a little help from his brother. A possession is something he could have even prevented, by being strong enough not to let a demon get inside him in the first place, or by fortifying himself with charms or symbols painted on his skin with his brother’s blood.

His _brother’s_. Now that’s really funny.

*******

“What if I’m a shapeshifter, and I just don’t remember?”

Dean stops drying his hair and throws the towel onto the dresser. Behind him, steam is wafting from the open bathroom door, thin clouds curling up towards the ceiling. “What?” He tilts his head to shake the water out of his ear, and crosses the room to his bed. Bare feet on the dirty motel room floor. “Why would you say that?”

Dean’s t-shirt is wet on his shoulders and down across his back. The thin, frayed fabric is brushing the waistband of his briefs. Sam watches the movements of Dean’s shoulder blades and the tight-knobbed rope of his spine as his brother bends over the bed and begins to gather the weapons into his duffel bag. 

Dean looks so comfortable in his own skin. Sam considered that, while he listened to the shower running. He prodded his own arm, closed his eyes and tried to think about shedding his outer layer – maybe the thing that emerged from beneath would feel more like him than this foreign arrangement of limbs – but he couldn’t find a way to do so. If the knowledge had ever been there, he’d lost it along with everything else.

He watches Dean shove the guns and knives into the duffel, muscles moving beneath the pale, bruised skin. Broad shoulders and solid back, hips lean and narrow, strong thighs, smooth calves, shapely feet. A scraped right big toe, a black pocket of blood under the chipped-off nail.

A thought occurs to Sam.

“You said shapeshifters like you,” he says, gaze coming back up to rest on the nape of Dean’s neck. “Maybe they... _like you..._ like you.”

Dean goes completely still for a moment, all of his muscles tensing at once. It’s a very short moment; he relaxes just as quickly and then snorts, shaking his head. “You got something to tell me, little brother?” He straightens, turns to Sam, and there’s a wide, challenging smile on his face – a smile Sam feels he’s supposed to _know_ , recognize from a life that used to be theirs. He’s probably supposed to feel at ease in the presence of that smile. Instead he just feels ridiculously annoyed. He closes his eyes, tries to calm down and focus.

“That’s not my point,” he says, irritably.

“What’s your point, then?”

Dean doesn’t sound like he’s smiling any more. When Sam looks at him again, his brother is holding the hunting knife in his hand. The rest of the arsenal is out of sight, the duffel zipped up and lying at the foot of the bed.

Dean takes a step toward him. “What’s your point, Sammy, huh? That I should be more careful? What the fuck would you know about careful right now?” He points the knife at Sam’s chest. “You feel like shedding some skin? Any itching? That silver necklace chafing you yet?”

Sam touches the pendant. He doesn’t even feel its weight. He shakes his head.

“No? Good. Then you’re not a fucking shapeshifter, okay? Now go get some sleep. We’ve got places to be tomorrow.”

 _Still not my point_ , Sam thinks, watching as Dean turns his back on him again, slips the knife under his pillow and gets under the covers.

“Flip the switch, would you?”

Sam stands up obediently and turns off the light. He stands in the darkness for a little while, and when Dean doesn’t say anything else, he makes his way to the bathroom and closes the door quietly behind him.

 _Not my point_ , he thinks, watching his face in the mirror. He splashes some cold water onto his unfamiliar skin, runs his hand through his tousled, too-long hair. Inspects the small scars on his cheek.

He was not in his bedroll beside Dean when the building collapsed, they’re both sure of that. But he doesn’t remember where he went, or why. He thinks it was more than just ‘I had to go and I must have tripped over something on the way’, but the more he prods his memory for a reason, or a clue, the more it feels like he’s trying to reach into an empty container. There is nothing – not even a wall separating him from the memories he lost. It feels like they’ve never been there.

So it doesn’t matter if he’s a shapeshifter or if he’s been possessed or whatever else they can come up with.

“I am not your brother,” he says, experimentally, to his own reflection.

He can’t decide if it sounds true or false.


	3. Context

“Why aren’t you freaked about this?”

Dean blinks, closes his mouth, and frowns at Sam over the menu he hasn’t been reading. “What?”

Sam sighs. It’s difficult, he’s already found, to get through to Dean when his brother is concentrated on something – like food, or weapons, or that waitress he’s been tracking with his eyes since they came in. It irritates Sam to no end, but at the same time he can’t help but feel fascinated: it seems that Dean is able to maintain no more than a singular point of connection to the world at any given time, and yet remain utterly at ease with his surroundings.

It’s like everything in the world – including Sam – naturally aligns to his brother.

Sam folds his hands on the table, tries to compose his unfamiliar face into a serious expression. He doesn’t know if he succeeds – it feels more like a face he’d make when trying to suck on a lemon.

“Dean, we’ve slept half the morning,” he says. “I don’t think we can get any more rested than that. My head doesn’t hurt, and I don’t have concussion or double vision or anything. To be honest, I didn’t feel too traumatized in the first place.” He lowers his voice; nobody else in the diner needs to know what they’re talking about. “But nothing’s coming back to me yet, Dean, and even if the amnesia is retrograde, I should be able to recall _something_ by now, and I just... I don’t understand how you can be so calm about this.”

Dean blinks at him. He looks like he’s still processing all the three-syllable words Sam just used, and Sam feels irritated again – he suspects it might be his default.

Then Dean shrugs, like nothing Sam just said was really that interesting. “What can I say, Sam. I’m a very cool person.”

Sam feels his mouth twist into a bitter grimace. Well, two can play this game. Dean can’t dodge him forever.

So he keeps staring. His hands are folded on the table, and his expression is as innocent as he can manage, but he doesn’t take his eyes off his brother’s face. Dean steadfastly ignores him for an impressively long time – he fiddles with his menu, pretending to be utterly engrossed in the fascinating subject of scrambled eggs and pancakes with raspberry sauce; his mouth is moving as he reads. Sam just keeps staring.

Finally, Dean lets out an exasperated sigh and folds down his menu.

“Look, dude,” he says. “I’m not the one who’s supposed to be freaking out here. You’re the one with no memory, remember?” And then he waggles his eyebrows, like it’s the best joke he’s ever told. He gives Sam a quick grin and goes back to the menu. Conversation over before it began; Sam’s attempt at being serious killed with a joke.

Sam doesn’t feel like joking.

He hoped he would dream, last night. He hoped that the memories he couldn’t consciously reach during the day would reveal themselves to him while he was asleep, when he wasn’t trying to tear them out of his brain. But he wasn’t that lucky – his mind seemed intent on rehashing the events of the previous night, and nothing else beyond that.

So he dreamed of trickling water and cold, deep darkness, its weight pressing him down, forcing the breath out of his body. He dreamed of a clear sky opening up above him, a vista of blackness with barely a handful of flickering stars. And finally, in what seemed to be the single metaphor his brain was able to conjure up, he dreamed about walking: he had a long way to go along a dark road, but his feet were too heavy, made of cold iron or lead, and he couldn’t get them to move.

The dream was so plain, so simple that he should have realized he was dreaming, but he woke up crying anyway, with his stomach empty and aching, his hands tearing at the bedspread and his legs still trembling and weak. 

And then it went from bad to even worse, when he realized Dean wasn’t in the room – he’d gone to get coffee, and check on his car – and Sam’s chest twisted with cold panic. He didn’t understand this – how could he have become so dependent on this man in barely a few hours they spent together? If there had been something there before, a bond of years and blood, Sam couldn’t find it now. All he could feel was the cold, suffocating, and completely irrational fear that if Dean left him, there would be no way for Sam to ever feel safe.

Was that what being _family_ felt like?

A punch on the shoulder shakes him back to the present. Dean is grinning at him over the table. “Dude, just relax already. You look like you might rupture something.” He points at Sam with the menu. “Now sit back and order your burger like a man... Oh, hey there!”

Their waitress has finally arrived, with a swish of perfumed air and a bright, sunshine smile, which she turns on Dean like he’s a savior come to take her away. Sam looks at her, assessing briefly – she’s not a threat, and she doesn’t look like anyone he might know, so no help there. Dean is already dutifully smiling back, and then they’re talking. Sam tunes the words out.

Instead, hidden behind his own menu and free of all associations with the past, he secretly watches the woman: the way she moves slightly closer to where Dean is sprawling wide on the red vinyl bench, both of them knowing where a conversation like this could potentially lead, yet at the same time oddly innocent in their knowledge; the way she brushes a lock of her hair from her forehead, a smooth move of delicate fingers around the shell of her ear, where a small silver earring gleams in the light like a shard of glass; the way her lips stretch over her small, white teeth as she talks, the tone of her voice low and carefully modulated, as smoothly professional as it could be downright filthy; the way her nostrils flare when she takes a shallow breath, already trying to catch Dean’s scent, assessing how it would mingle with her own; the way her pulse beats steadily, fluttering beneath the skin on her neck, where Sam could press, gently, and snuff the life out of her in one smooth move.

He knows he could. He is not sure how he would do it exactly, but he feels the knowledge right there, in the tips of his fingers.

‘Do you know how to use a gun?’ Dean had asked, back in the room, after Sam had walked the straight line from one wall to another and touched his nose and recited the goddamn alphabet backwards. ‘Do you know how to shoot a moving target? Do you know how to sharpen a knife?’

Sam did.

And it seemed good enough for Dean.

He watches the waitress walk away with their order, and belatedly realizes Dean didn’t even ask what he wanted to eat. He turns back to his brother – who is grinning at him over a cup of black coffee as if he knows something Sam doesn’t.

Sam frowns at him. “What?”

Dean takes a careful sip. His eyes glint at Sam over the rim of the cup. “You know what, Sammy? I like the new you.”

Sam just blinks at him, uncomprehending.

Dean smiles again, shakes his head. “The way you were just checking her out, man... Unbelievable.”

Sam blinks again. “I wasn’t,” he says, truthfully.

“Oh, dude, you so totally were.”

Sam doesn’t correct him twice. _No, I wasn’t_ , he thinks to himself, and looks down into his cup. The waitress must have put it there when he wasn’t looking – when he was elsewhere, _inside_ , watching his brief, strangely intimate fantasy of murder.

He raises his head, brushes his hair out of his eyes. “I just don’t understand,” he says slowly, “why you find it so goddamn funny, Dean.”

Dean seems to actually think about it for a while. “I don’t know,” he says at last. He waves his hand around, looking for words. “Some cosmic... karma... justice... thingy, I guess.” Then he smirks, points downwards, over and through Sam’s coffee cup, and gives Sam a sleazy big-brother look, which Sam instantly hates. “Or maybe it’s your downstairs brain telling you to finally take a vacation, huh, Sammy? Man, I know for a fact that you could use one...”

Sam tightens his fingers around his cup. “Look, Dean, I’m trying to be serious here.”

“Me too.” Dean keeps smirking at him, shameless. He sprawls back on his bench. “But don’t worry. When I get tired of the new you and start missing that tight-assed son-of-a-bitch little brother I had, I promise I’ll let you know, okay? In the meantime, do me a favor.” He looks openly at the waitress, who is now by another table, taking an order. She smiles at him and ducks her head. Dean flashes an answering smile in her direction, and then smoothly turns it on Sam. “When you get your groove back, don’t forget you could do _this_ , okay? It’d be a real shame to waste it.”

*****

Twenty miles down the road, Sam braces himself against the dashboard of the Chevy. “Dean, stop the car.”

They’re going ninety, navigating between an 18-wheeler and an oversized pickup truck, which has been persistently tailgating them for the last twenty miles, so they’re not exactly in a position to stop. Dean spares a glance at him, lightning-fast. “Dude, you’re not gonna—”

“Stop the car, Dean.” Sam leans against the dashboard, tries to fold in on himself, keep his insides together for a little while longer. “ _Now_.”

Dean looks frantic. “Dude, you’re _not_ gonna puke in my _car_.”

Sam doesn’t say anything. He closes his eyes and breathes.

Dean somehow manages to squeeze them from the truck-and-truck sandwich, and the moment Sam feels the bump of the wheels dropping off the edge of the asphalt, he reaches for the door handle. The car is still moving when he opens the door and scrambles out, and he tears the skin on his palms and the knee of his jeans when he skids on the gravel, but at least he spares himself and Dean the pleasure of airing the car for the next five hundred miles.

After, he stumbles to the side and sits on his haunches in the muddy grass. The air is cool and scented; sweet smell of the first morning rain. Sam closes his eyes and lets himself just breathe for a while.

The touch on the back of his neck startles him. He flinches away, but Dean’s hand follows, keeping the contact.

“Sorry, Sam,” his brother says from above him. He sounds genuinely concerned, for once. “Guess I shouldn’t have fed you all those greasy burgers, huh.” He threads his fingers into Sam’s hair, stroking gently, soothingly. “I’ll let you eat your veggies from now on, okay?”

Sam doesn’t think it’s only the burgers – his stomach feels like it wouldn’t process any kind of solid food whatsoever – but he nods, numb and desperate. Dean’s hand is warm and dry, solid at the back of his neck—

And if this is what being family feels like, not only that helpless, frustrating dependence, Sam wants it back.

He shuts his eyes tighter, leans into the warmth of Dean’s touch and tries to feel something more beneath the physical contact. He tries to _remember_ the thing that was there before, drag up the context and place himself back in the life he used to have, but all he can feel is skin and bone and gentle pressure, and then Dean takes his hand away and there is nothing, only footsteps on gravel and the whoosh of the passing traffic.

Sam stays a while on the side of the road, breathing, and then he gets up slowly, careful of his stinging palms, and follows Dean back to the car.

*****

It’s after sundown when they pass the Washington state line, and Dean lets Sam drive for a while. He pretends to be napping, sprawled on the passenger side with sunglasses on, but Sam already knows better than that – it’s Dean’s way of keeping an eye on his crazy little amnesiac brother. He’s been doing that the whole day. He probably thinks he’s being subtle.

Sam feels irritated again, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t turn on the radio, and lets the landscape shudder by in a blur of gray and black. Shadows dance on the side of the road, small animals turn their shining eyes on them in the dark, the car creaks and whines an occasional protest on the decayed country road. And despite himself, Sam begins to find the rhythm of the journey soothing. His hands rest on the wheel, his eyes hold on to the dotted line on the asphalt, and his brother is breathing slowly, warm and alive beside him.

It makes Sam think that this might be a moment he’d known, before.

It’s not a memory, but it almost feels like one.

*****

7 UP, a chocolate bar, and two aspirin are Sam’s lunch and dinner. Dean glances at him guiltily from the bed, licking his sauce-stained fingertips, but he doesn’t hesitate to eat Sam’s share of the pizza, so Sam doesn’t really believe the guilty look. Afterwards, Dean sprawls untidily on top of the covers, pillow bunched against the (yes, that’s apparently a palm tree with little yellow bananas, although Sam has to blink twice to be sure) headboard, remote in hand, and begins flipping the channels on mute.

Sam has been delegated to do ‘research’. Which so far has mainly consisted of him sitting at his laptop, logged on to Dean’s account (which doesn’t let him do _anything_ , of course, and ‘How’s that medicine taste now, huh, Sammy?’) and trying to guess his own password. Occasionally, he flicks through some websites on amnesia, but the jumble of words on the little screen makes his eyes hurt. Which may or may not be a side effect after all; he doesn’t really care.

He’s found he’s not really that interested in finding the scientific explanation. Dean told him to look, so he could find out of what was happening to him and why, and maybe that would be the first step to getting the memories back. A few little push-ups with his brain couldn’t hurt, Dean said, but Sam doesn’t see the point – exercising his brain just for the sake of it feels like running a marathon on an empty stomach. He doesn’t have the energy for research.

Instead, he finds himself distracted time and again by the flickering light of the TV, reflected in the dresser mirror, and when he looks to see if he could somehow stop the annoying blinking, he sees that Dean is asleep on the bed, lax fingers curled around the remote and head tilted against the ugly Hawaiian-wannabe headboard. The empty pizza box lies open on the bed beside him.

Sam doesn’t move. He barely dares to breathe – he is at last free from the constant scrutiny of the past twelve hours; Dean’s insistent presence has vanished from the room like a snuffed-out candle. It feels like a tremendous weight has been lifted off of Sam’s shoulders, and he is finally, absolutely, undeniably alone.

He sits back in the chair and for a while he just watches Dean sleep. His brother still has his boots and a button-down shirt on, and his jeans are dirty at the knees. His mouth is slightly open, and his chest is rising and falling with a slow, deep breath. The multicolored TV-light dances across his face, accentuating the dark shadows of weariness under his eyes.

Dean’s expression in sleep is relaxed, open – and to Sam, perfectly unfamiliar.

Sam breathes slowly, in and out. A thought has just occurred to him, strange and unexpected, and yet brilliant in its simplicity.

In this moment, he realizes, he can look at Dean the way he did at the beginning. His brother can become a stranger again, a man who doesn’t give Sam easy smiles or stupid endearments, who doesn’t make jokes at Sam’s expense without bothering to explain them. He can become someone who doesn’t touch Sam casually like he’s done that for years and won’t even notice Sam’s instinctive, frightened response. Asleep on the motel bed, blue and red and green in the flickering light of the TV, his brother is a cartoon character for Sam to draw from scratch – from the muddy soles of his boots and the dirty jeans with crusted folds at his ankles, over the dark patches on his knees, the glint of his belt buckle and the striped pattern of his flannel shirt to the torn collar of the black t-shirt underneath, over the dark shadow of stubble across his jaw, across his relaxed, delicate face and over his smoothed-out forehead to the spiky tips of his hair.

Sam lets his eyes follow the shapes of the sleeping body, shadows of moving pictures across clothes and skin making the mental drawing slowly come to life. For one brief moment he is afraid that the eyes will open, that Dean— that _the man on the bed_ will wake up under the weight of his gaze, but Sam doesn’t stop. He keeps looking, mindlessly drawing the shapes in his head, over and over, until he’s forgotten the man’s name, forgotten the word _brother_ , forgotten that there was ever anything connecting the two of them – this way, he thinks, delighted and breathless, he can go back to the beginning, clear his mind to a completely blank page and hope that maybe the aching emptiness resulting from it will force his brain to stall, reset, and then start again, and the lost pieces will flip back into place.

The room is disappearing around him, tunnel vision throwing the body on the bed into sharp focus, so close to Sam’s face that he could raise his hand and touch it, like a miniaturized display made just for him. Slowly, the image begins to pull at him, until Sam leans against the table and stands.

The chair creaks, the tunnel vision disperses, and Sam freezes for a moment, thrown out of his trance – but the man on the bed doesn’t wake, so Sam takes another breath and straightens.

His footsteps across the room are quiet; his body moves with purpose, even though Sam doesn’t know yet what the purpose is. But then he steps in front of the TV, his shadow falls across the sheets, across the sleeping man’s chest, and suddenly Sam knows what he is looking for.

It’s simple, really. It’s so basic he’s amazed that he didn’t think of it before. He steps around the bed, wary of the sound of the creaking floorboards, and then he lowers himself carefully to kneel on the shaggy old carpet.

Then he leans in and kisses the sleeping man softly on the mouth.

*******

Later, lying in the back seat of the Impala, his body shaking with each bump of the car on the secluded back road, he’ll know that this was his first mistake. Not the breaking of this particular taboo, not exactly. And not even the overstepping of Dean’s personal boundary and scaring him into the predictable guilt of something he might have done wrong in the past – Dean would have forgiven him that, in the end.

No, the first mistake was that he purposely overstepped a boundary of his own. He’d known it was there, even though he didn’t remember. Even through the haze he’d been in at that moment, somewhere deep inside he’d realized that reaching across that boundary would bring something different, something potentially life-changing. And he was reaching with the full knowledge that the consequences might be shattering for both of them.

He was just hoping that whatever the result of his actions might be, his natural defenses would cushion them both through the fallout.

Funny how he didn’t know those defenses were never there in the first place.

*******

At first, nothing happens. The lips under his are relaxed and soft, and utterly oblivious. A little sweet, a little bitter, but mostly just warm and pleasant to the touch.

And there is nothing more to it, Sam realizes, just the smooth, yielding flesh, a delicate point of contact between two human beings, nothing odd or earth-shattering or spectacular about it. His body doesn’t react, and he suspects he should be grateful, but instead a bone-deep disappointment hits him like a punch in the gut.

He feels stupid and helpless and hollow. He thinks he might cry.

He begins to pull back, intending to leave as quietly as he came, but before he has the chance, the lips under his begin to respond, and it’s suddenly his brother again, turning his head towards Sam’s mouth with a barely audible, hungry sound, it’s _Dean_ , kissing him right back, and for a brief, singular moment of astonishment, Sam isn’t sure any more. Is this something they _do_?

But Dean doesn’t give him much time to think about it.

“What the...?” And then his brother is scrambling out of the bed and onto the floor in a tangle of flailing limbs and with a flash of terrified eyes. “Oh _Jesus_ , Sam, what the _fuck_!” He frantically wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and then pauses, hovering uneasily on the other side of the bed, like he can’t decide if going for a gun is a good idea, since the duffel bag is too close to Sam.

Sam sits back, takes a calming breath. Dean was asleep, he realizes with something approaching relief. So there isn’t _that much_ to write home about, which is probably good.

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that he failed – he is the same person he was ten minutes before, only now Dean is looking at him with reserve in his eyes, watching Sam like he is a stranger.

Sam thinks it’s about time.

After a moment Dean stops hovering and sits carefully on the other bed. “Seriously, Sam. What the fuck?” His voice is still trembling a little. 

Sam shakes his head. “Nothing. Forget it, Dean. There was nothing.”

“Of course there was nothing, you freak! What the fuck were you expecting?”

Dean is still tense, but Sam can already see his body relaxing – he is leaning toward Sam, just a little, and within a space of a breath Sam gets terribly, viciously angry: even in a situation like this Dean still reaches out towards his little brother.

“I don’t know,” Sam says, gritting his teeth. “Revulsion, maybe. Disgust. I hoped I would feel sick, Dean.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Dean’s expression is entirely, infuriatingly uncomprehending. Sam stands up, dusting his knees, and turns away from Dean. “Never mind. Just forget it, okay? Forget I was even here.”

He flips the lock on the door and goes outside, into the night.

*****

Dean comes out looking for him a few minutes later. He doesn’t say anything, just lowers himself down on the curb beside Sam. For a while they just sit there, staring off into space. Dean looks calm – too calm, given what just happened – and Sam’s anger starts boiling inside him again.

Finally, Dean clears his throat. “Listen, I’m...”

“Save it.” Sam is not in the mood for discussion, or any forced apologies. “I did something, you freaked, natural reaction, end of story. Can we _not_ talk about this? Thank you.”

Dean is quiet for another moment. It doesn’t last long, though, as Sam suspected it wouldn’t.

“I know what you were trying to do, Sam,” Dean says. He is carefully weighing each word, keeping his voice steady and calm. “And it’s no big deal. I shouldn’t have flipped out. I know it’s difficult for you.”

Sam turns to him. “Oh yeah? How about you make it easy, then?”

Dean is looking straight ahead. His expression is unreadable. “What do you mean?” he asks gently.

Sam huffs out an exasperated breath. “How about you just _tell_ me? You can’t expect me to dig everything up on my own, Dean. You have to give me _something_.”

Dean nods slowly, like he agrees, but then he says, “And what if I don’t?”

Sam looks at him, disbelieving. “Are you serious? You can’t possibly _want_ this.” He spreads his arms helplessly. “Dragging me around like that, waiting until something comes back to me. That doesn’t make any sense! It doesn’t lead anywhere.”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.” The same emotionless, agreeable tone.

“What? Why?”

Dean looks down at his hands. A small, rueful smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve been thinking, Sam,” he says, “and I just don’t know... Maybe this is what I’m supposed to do. Maybe if I’m going to save you...” He pauses, grimaces, as if he said something he didn’t intend to say. Sam frowns with him. “Maybe if I want to _protect_ you,” Dean continues carefully, “then this is a way to do that.”

But Sam won’t let him sidestep that easy. “Wait, Dean... Save me? What are you talking about?”

Dean sighs, rubs his mouth. For a long moment he looks like he’s battling with himself, deciding how much he should say: he looks like he’s outlining the bare minimum in his head – things that would make Sam shut up and stop asking him questions.

“Okay, fine,” he says at last. “I guess you need to know the basics, or you might just hurt yourself with that shock therapy of yours, huh?” He gives Sam a weak smile, and Sam feels a twinge of hurt – Dean can make a joke out of everything. Sam doubts he can ever get used to that.

But his brother is serious again. “There’s this demon,” he says. “And it kinda has a grudge against the family...”

*****

Dean talks for a while in slow, stuttering sentences, taking careful steps around each word, as if it were a landmine ready to blow up in his face. Sam learns about a yellow-eyed demon, a mother who died a long time ago, and a father who raised them both with a singular purpose in mind. Dean talks about their father longer than he talks about anything else, and Sam hears genuine longing in his brother’s voice – he wishes he could relate to that.

Instead, no matter how hard he tries, it’s like listening to a story about strangers, and one of them just happens to bear the same name as he does. Nothing Dean says really applies to him. He understands it on the intellectual level, but only, he thinks, because of the potential threat it has to his own life. And if he wants anything, he wants to live – only this way he can have a brother again.

“It still doesn’t make sense,” he says when Dean has finished. They’re sitting beside each other in mirroring positions; Sam’s hands and feet are going slowly and quietly numb. “I mean, if you keep the rest of it from me. What if this demon shows up, and I don’t know what to do?

Dean nods, like he’s been expecting that argument. “That’s exactly my point, Sam. It won’t show up. Not when you’re... like _this_.”

“Meaning if I’m not exactly myself?”

“Yeah. And you’ll know what to do. You didn’t forget how to be a hunter, did you?”

And Sam can’t help it – he thinks about the sunshine smile and the fluttering pulse. He shakes his head ruefully. “No, I guess I didn’t.”

Dean stands up, dusts off the seat of his pants. “Then come on.” He extends a hand to Sam, who grabs it instinctively. Dean hauls him up, and Sam has a moment to appreciate not having to deal with the pins and needles in his limbs all by himself.

“Let’s go get some shuteye,” Dean says, and his mouth twitches in a half-grin. “I didn’t drag your sorry ass all the way down here for a vacation, Sammy. We’ve got some fugly son-of-a-bitch to kill tomorrow.” Then he turns away and heads back to the motel room.

Sam stares after him. Dean wants them to do a regular job, as if nothing happened. This, to his brother, means normal life. Or at least – their kind of normal.

So if Sam can help with it, he will.

“You liked it, back there, for a while,” he says, challengingly, to Dean’s retreating back.

Dean doesn’t miss a beat. “That’s ‘cause you kiss like a _girl_ , dude.”

Sam laughs and follows his brother back into their room.


	4. Pieces

Sam has another 7 UP for breakfast and half a box of chocolate chip cookies for lunch (and that’s only because Dean stole the other half). They do some research in the local newspaper, verify the obits, compare them with the info Dean already had on the case. They forgo a visit to the morgue and scout the forest instead. The weather is gloomy, but it doesn’t rain, so they manage not to get completely soaked. Sam dries his shoes on the windowsill while Dean goes out looking for dinner. Sweet orange chicken and more 7 Up, a re-counting of the silver bullets and Dean proclaims them set and ready to go.

The forest looks different at night, and the tracks they’d found by daylight are invisible now. The moon has just risen, but its light is barely filtering through the thick foliage.

Dean is striding purposefully through the bushes, following the hidden trail as if by scent alone, and Sam realizes with a pang of sudden jealousy that his brother is way better at this than he is – where Sam has only instinct and the basic idea of how to handle a weapon, Dean has the knowledge and self-confidence of a seasoned warrior.

Maybe going on a hunt so soon wasn’t such a good idea, after all. Dean seems to have faith in them – he’s been cheerfully restless all day, the anticipation of the adrenaline surge so tangible Sam could almost taste it. It was like his brother was _happy_ to go hunt the thing, and if it was hunting in general, or werewolves especially, Sam had no idea. He didn’t ask, though – he’d had enough weirdness as it was, for a while.

They both practiced with a machete as a secondary weapon, and Dean decided Sam shouldn’t have any trouble defending himself. But now, watching his brother’s back in the near dark, his movements so fluid he looks like he’s blending with his surroundings, Sam isn’t sure any more.

“Dean?”

“Shhh.” Dean stops, abruptly, his head tilted to the side. He is listening to something in the dark.

Sam holds his breath. He doesn’t hear anything.

And apparently neither does Dean, because after a while, he shrugs, then relaxes and turns to fully face Sam. “What?” The whites of his eyes glint in the darkness.

Sam breathes out, already on a slow surge of adrenaline. He shakes his head. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

Dean watches him for a moment. Then he turns back around, starts again along the path.

He never gets to finish the move.

A large, dark shape shoots out from between the trees with impossible speed, and in a blur of black hair, gleaming teeth and mercilessly beating paws topples Dean to the ground.

Sam stands frozen in place. The machete is a searing weight across his back, but his arms are numb and he can’t reach, he can’t react, he can’t do anything. His brother is _right there_ , crushed beneath what must be three hundred pounds of pure, living, animal aggression, and Sam can’t do anything but stand there and watch, rooted to the spot and unable to think.

“ _Sam_ ,” Dean manages to wheeze out, and then they’re both gone, the werewolf crashing through the undergrowth, dragging Dean off into the dark.

*****

Too soon, Sam thinks morosely, hacking through the tangled bushes. Too goddamn soon. They should have found another job: some kind of spirit, some haunting, simple and easy – get in, salt and burn the bones and get out. But instead they had to hunt a goddamn _werewolf_. As if Dean couldn’t find anything better to amuse himself with.

Sam doesn’t know how long he just stood there, shocked into stillness, frozen in place like a frightened rabbit. Not long enough to let the wolf out of his hearing range, thank God. When he finally unfroze, the machete was in his hand faster than he could blink.

They’re both still ahead of him, fighting and crashing in the dark. There have been no gunshots so far, and no sound of Dean’s voice, so Sam suspects the wolf is winning. It won’t kill Dean, though, Sam is fairly sure of that – it didn’t go for the throat, or Dean would be already bleeding to death and there would be no point in dragging him anywhere. No, the werewolf is looking for _company_.

And, Sam has to grudgingly admit, the damn animal has a good eye.

It could have easily killed Sam first and dragged Dean away afterwards, before either of them could tell what was going on – it’s that fast. But no, it had to go for the leader. It had to get the alpha male first, and then maybe come for the rest of the frightened pack. Safer that way – with Dean already out of it, scratched good and well and stacked somewhere safe, where he wouldn’t come to until it was already too late.

I’m thinking like a goddamn werewolf, Sam realizes, and smiles sullenly to himself. Now what do you say to _that_ , Dean?

Dean doesn’t say anything. The forest is quiet now, and Sam slows down when he nears the place where he last heard the sounds of fighting. He crouches behind a fallen tree, machete in hand, his body tense and ready. He knows the animal won’t be able to smell him until he is very close – the wind is good to him tonight. He looks over quickly, scans the empty space between the trees.

Broken branches, dead leaves, stones and mud. No movement.

And then he sees it – a huge, twisted shape, standing on its hind legs in a grotesque imitation of a person. It’s big even though it’s bent over, leaning down to nudge something on the ground with its paw.

Something. _Dean_.

Sam is stealthy – he discovers he likes to be stealthy; it’s so much better this way. He is also tall, so when he steps over the tree trunk and begins to creep forward, hunched over like it’s going to make him less visible, he is still almost as tall as the werewolf.

When he steps close, the smell of the animal hits him like a physical blow – the mixed odors of wet fur, old sweat and rotten flesh – and it goes to his head faster than an IV drip into the blood, swift and instantaneous.

It feels like the best drug he could have ever imagined.

The first blow doesn’t connect. The werewolf hears him or smells him a split-second before, and it snaps around and tenses, still upright in that mockery of a standing human being, and Sam hesitates – even though he has a weapon, the werewolf is still stronger, and this time it will probably go straight for the throat.

But then the wolf makes the fatal mistake of trying not to let Sam between it and its prey, and suddenly Sam knows exactly what to expect, and he’s almost ecstatic – it’s _that_ easy.

The second blow connects, a vicious slice across the chest that should infuriate the animal, make it bold enough to try and tackle Sam to the ground, and when that comes, Sam is prepared.

The werewolf crashes into him with a staggering, spine-cracking force; bones and muscle like steel under the wet, steaming fur. Sam skids good three feet backwards on the muddy ground, fighting to stay upright, but he doesn’t fall. The werewolf snarls like it’s surprised his resistance and tries to shove him again, but Sam has already found the space between the ribs. He digs his heels into the ground and shoves back.

The machete goes right through. The snarl is cut in half, and the hard, elongated jaw full of sharp, ugly teeth shuts with a wet snap beside Sam’s ear – the wolf does go for his neck, but Sam has already gone for the heart. 

He holds his breath – that horrible _stench_ is right in his face, and if he lets more of it into his lungs, it might be too much; the overdose could tip him over from focused to blindly insane. So he doesn’t breathe, and instead digs his heels deeper into the ground, and twists the machete, yanks it down through the stomach and welcomes the heat flushing out and over his hands. He feels the thing’s paws gripping around his back, trying to scratch him or maybe crush him in a bear-like hold, but the machete is lined with silver, and that works faster than anything.

The wolf topples forward without a sound, its whole weight suddenly on Sam’s shoulders like a leaning tower, and it takes all of Sam’s strength to push the animal to the side, where it lands on the wet ground like a bag of stones, shapeless and deformed.

It doesn’t have the strength to attack, but it’s not dead yet – Sam can hear it wheezing quietly, in and out, and, quivering a little on his feet, he finds an answering sound in his own chest.

He takes a breath, then leans over the body, grasps the hilt of the machete and pulls. The weapon slides out slowly, dragging blood and tissue. Sam’s arms feel weak and his lungs are burning, but he is not finished yet – he still has work to do.

*****

Dismembering a werewolf is a little like disjointing a chicken. Sam works slowly, carefully, and by the time he has pulled the other hind leg away from the body and sliced cleanly through the joint between the bones, rigor mortis has already begun to set in. Figures, Sam thinks idly, what with all the running and fighting the wolf did before it died.

He wonders how fast his own body would stiffen – the fight with the wolf wasn’t tiring enough to light up all his muscles.

The head is the last to go, and the most difficult. Sam struggles with the tendons and the spine for good five minutes, and fervently wishes for an axe. Looks like the machete is already wearing down.

“One s... silver bullet,” says a weak voice behind him. “Woulda been much... easier.”

Sam turns, machete in hand. His head feels like it’s been wrapped in cotton; he can’t see clearly into the darkness, and the black shape on the ground nearby is just that – a black shape.

And then his heart stutters against his ribs, _thump-thump_ , in double time.

Dean. _Jesus_.

He’s forgotten Dean was even _there_.

He throws the machete onto the gutted, dismembered corpse and kneels by his brother. Dean is lying on his back, staring up into the sky with empty, glistening eyes, and for a brief, terrifying moment Sam thinks he’s hallucinated the voice.

But then Dean blinks, turns to look at him. “Having fun?” he says, and his mouth quirks. A grimace of pain crosses his face a second after, and Sam quickly looks him over.

“Where?” he asks, without preamble.

Dean breathes quietly for a while. “On my back,” he says. “I think.”

Sam grasps his shoulders, turns him slowly over onto his side, and sure enough, the crisscrossing gashes are there, nice and clear, deep enough to cut through Dean’s leather jacket and break his skin, but shallow enough that they don’t damage his spine.

“Front pocket,” Dean tells him, breathless.

Sam fishes out the canteen, then gently lowers Dean onto his stomach, slips the torn jacket off his brother’s shoulders and tosses it aside.

Dean yells when the holy water boils across his back, and the sound is so shocking in the silence that Sam barely manages to keep his hold on the canteen. Then Dean is thrashing, trying to scramble away in what seems like three directions at once, including underground, so Sam throws the canteen aside and launches himself across his brother’s body, grabbing hold of his flailing hands and pinning his legs to the ground with his own.

Dean says something that sounds vaguely like ‘motherfucking son-of-a-bitch’ with an added bonus of a mouthful of rotten leaves and dirt, and he stops struggling. His muscles are still tense, his skin is still steaming under the tattered t-shirt, but he’s not trying to run any more. Sam waits a few moments, breathing hard along with Dean’s wheezing, and then begins to release him.

The scent hits him out of nowhere, sudden and completely unexpected. It fades just as quickly, and on the heels of it comes a sense-memory so strong Sam has to close his eyes for a moment or he thinks he might pass out.

He tightens his hands on the wrists he’s holding, and tries to capture the scent again. He leans in closer, burrows his face in the wet hair, and breathes. His lips touch cold skin, and there it is again; faint and vague, but yes, it’s a memory, it must be.

He is aware of the weak movements of the wrists under his hands, a slow undulation of the body beneath his, a shudder, a muffled sound of a voice. He doesn’t pay attention – it irritates him, now somehow more than ever.

He recognizes the smell of blood, and fresh sweat, and underneath, something indefinable, something that _makes_ the memory, but is impossible to make out clearly.

He needs to have more.

He pulls at the wrists and wrenches the other man on his back. There is a weak movement again, a completely ineffective struggle, and Sam swats the annoying hands away. He needs to get closer to the source of the scent; he needs to know.

But the annoying hands won’t be persuaded, and when they start clawing at his collar, Sam swats them away again and then half-heartedly backhands the man across the face, lightly, just to stop the distracting clawing—

And yes, he realizes, elated – yes, this is better. The scent is there, faint and barely at the edge of his perception, but now there is something else too, awakening inside him – these movements he knows, these touches; the brief contact of his hand with the man’s face is familiar. Sam backhands him again, and then makes a fist and delivers the first real blow.

The body beneath him heaves up, trying to throw him off, but he knows this move as well – and he’s taller, heavier, so he won’t be easily dislodged. He is riding a high now, blocking the weak, attempted punches and just pressing down, breathing calmly and steadily, blow by blow, until the man beneath him stops moving, stops defending himself.

At first, Sam thinks he might be unconscious, or dead, but then he sees that the glistening eyes are still staring up, wide and alive, and mortified.

And that’s when he realizes, in a shudder of self-awareness, that he’s gotten hard against the other man’s stomach.

He stops, uncomprehending; his mind has screeched to a halt, the blurring wave has disappeared and all of a sudden he is completely, excruciatingly aware of his body – his boots digging into the ground, his shins blocking the man’s thighs, his spine arched, one hand held back over his shoulder and readying another blow to the man’s destroyed face, his other hand clenched tight in the man’s t-shirt.

He stops, and in the space between one breath and another he has time to think that maybe he should have seen that one coming, but then there’s a heavy thump of something hard against his face and the world blinks out.

*****

“Sam. Hey, Sammy. Wake the fuck up.”

Everything hurts.

Sam opens his eyes, and there is the sky again, narrow and empty, with black, ragged treetops framing its edges like a tattered collar. He can barely move – his body feels like it wants to go to sleep and not wake up for the next hundred years.

“That’s some mighty fucked up issues you have there, little brother.”

Sam makes the herculean effort of levering himself up on his elbows, turns his head in the direction of the voice, and tries to blink away the numb pain in the left side of his skull.

Dean is sitting with his back against a nearby tree, legs apart, shoulders loose, both hands curled in his lap. His head is tilted back against the trunk, as if it's just too heavy to hold upright. His eyes are glistening and wet, and in the faint glow of the moonlight Sam can see that Dean’s dirty and bloodied face is streaked with tears.

He opens his mouth. “Dean...”

And Dean laughs – a sudden, humorless, shapeless laughter that just blows right over any words Sam would have said. “Seriously, Sammy. Back when I taught you about birds and bees, I never thought all you wanted was a freakin’ demonstration.”

Sam sags heavily back onto the ground.

He feels utterly, miserably helpless. He thought Dean understood. That kiss had been a test, and it failed, it didn’t really count – but just now, with that precise dealing of blows, Sam felt a real, perceptible trail connecting the both of them in a way he didn’t comprehend yet, but couldn’t deny, either. That sense-memory was _there_ , and not just at the tip of his fingers, like strikes of a machete or a rapport from a shotgun, it was _beneath his skin_ , and he’d gladly tear himself open to get at it, if he could. He’d gladly tear Dean open.

“No, Dean,” he says. “It’s not like that, I swear...”

But Dean is not listening to him. “Save it, Sam, okay? Just... please. I don’t want to hear it. Whatever I did wrong, I just...” His voice falters at that, like he’s run out of breath. “I’m just _sorry_ , okay? I’m sorry if I broke you, or hurt you, or... Or whatever it is you think I’ve done to you... Just—”

And something in Sam twists, low and dark, a knot of anger and disappointment, because _of course_ Dean would blame himself; his brother just doesn't seem to be able to look, _really_ look at Sam and recognize the danger.

_What the fuck would you know about careful?_

Sam ignores the numbing pain in his muscles, gets up and scrambles towards Dean, grabs both his shoulders and shakes him, hard. “Dean, stop it. Just _stop it_ , all right? Look at me.”

Dean flinches and gasps – the grip has pulled the cuts on his back, like Sam knew it would – and then he slowly, visibly reins himself in. He looks up at Sam with a determined expression; his face is red and black, bruises already swelling, and it’s all Sam can do not to tear his own limbs off, one by one, to silence the guilt, drown it in his own pain.

“I’m...” he says, not really sure how to begin, now that a creeping suspicion has materialized itself in his mind. He is shaking, his thoughts tumbling down over themselves. “I think there is something wrong with me, Dean,” he finally says; careful and pleading for Dean to understand.

Dean blinks at him for a moment, expression totally blank, and then his face screws up, and his smile is ugly, desperate, and _beautiful_ , because even in this situation Dean tries to lessen the impact of everything with a goddamn joke. “Oh, you _think_ , college boy?”

Sam loosens his grip on his brother’s shoulders. “Dean, I’m serious.” A breath, and yes, he can do it. “What if this demon... What if he’s the one who took my memories, just... wiped my mind clean? What if it’s this demon that’s doing this... all of this... to me? I mean... he _could_ do this, right?”

Dean looks incredulous. He blinks a couple of times, and then laughs right into Sam’s face, but again it’s that forced, mirthless sound. “What the hell for? So you could get some nookie from your own brother? Now that would be freakin’ hilarious...”

Dean is still trying to joke, but Sam can already see that his brother is thinking about it, weighing the odds, guessing the _real_ possible reasons. He shakes his head. He needs to spell it out, for both of them. 

“No, Dean,” he says, calmly. “So he could _rewrite_ me. Like a blank page. Make me into something...” He wants to say ‘into something I’m not’, but he realizes he has no reliable way of knowing. He swallows. “Into something he wants.”

“And for what?” Dean snorts. “So you’d forget you’ve been chasing his goddamn tail all over the place? No freakin’ way, man. Not while _I’m_ here. And even if he could—”

“Dean...”

“No, Sam.” Dean is serious at last. He’s raised his chin, and his eyes are bright and clear. “Even if he could, he would have done this a long time ago, to any of you, and he’d have a fucking _army_ of psychics at his disposal by now. So no, no fucking way it’s the demon.”

Sam lets him go, falls back and sits heavily on the sodden ground. An army of psychics? _Jesus_. What else?

What else hasn’t Dean told him about? What else is he going to find about himself that he’d maybe, just _maybe_ rather forget?

Dean is again leaning back against the tree, watching him, quiet. Sam can still see the tear tracks on his brother’s face, and something in his gut clenches tight: it doesn’t feel like a sense-memory this time – it feels like a decision. One he needs to make for them both, because Dean obviously won’t.

“I think,” he says, “that you should leave me here, Dean. Just get up and go away, as far and as fast as you can, because...” He tightens his fists. He can’t look at his brother any longer; can’t look at his own goddamn handiwork. “I think I’m changing. I can feel it. And the more... the closer I get to you, the longer I’m with you, the more of it is growing inside me...”

“Yeah, genius,” Dean interrupts him. “It’s called _getting your memories back_. And there’s some seriously fucked up shit in there, so no wonder it’s screwing with your sense of perception.”

“Dean...”

“No, Sam. Stop it. No more of this ‘I’m changing’ crap, okay? I’ve had it.”

“Dean, I almost—”

“Shut the fuck up, Sam. I don’t care! We’re gonna get you better, you understand? We’re gonna get through this. Whatever it tak—ow!” Dean tenses, grits his teeth. “ _Shit_. That fucking smarts...” He’s pulled the cuts on his back again. He keeps himself still for a moment, his face scrunched up, and after that, he doesn’t say anything else. For a while they both just sit there in silence.

Sam’s ears are ringing.

Dean still doesn’t understand: Sam is going to dig deeper, he’s going to _have to_ , now that he knows that it works. He’s going to tear out every sense-memory he can, until he finds enough to place himself back in context.

And before he’s finished, he will probably hurt his brother beyond recognition. If that’s not what the demon wants him to do, if that’s not the point of this whole exercise, then Sam doesn’t know what is.

“You have no self-preservation at all when it comes to me, do you?” he says darkly, and Dean only snorts at that, as if it’s _Sam_ who is being ridiculous. Then he tries to stand up, his back rigid, and fails three times before he grimaces at Sam, teeth shining white in the moonlight.

“Self-preservation is my middle name, Sammy,” he grits out. “Now move your ass. You need to help me get back to the car, my back is fucking _killing_ me.”

*****

They go back to the motel – they’ve paid for the room, and Dean is hurt, so they might as well stay one more night. Sam is helping Dean out of the car, his brother already grousing about ‘fucking werewolf bitch ruined my goddamn jacket’ and ‘you were supposed to have my goddamn back’, when Sam feels his skin crawl – literally _crawl_ , goosebumps and itching and burning all over the place. He stops, twists around, with Dean hanging off his arm like a shuffling ragdoll.

“Ow, man, what the—?”

“Shh.” Sam’s heart is in his throat, and it’s _pounding_. He can barely hear the sounds of the night through the rush of blood in his ears.

There is something... _somebody_ there. He can feel their presence, and it’s like a sudden, cold touch to the back of his neck: it gives him shivers of the worst kind.

Dean is paying attention now. He has stopped leaning against Sam and is now standing on his own, his injuries instantly forgotten. “Sam? What is it? What did you see?”

But Sam didn’t see anything. He looks around the parking lot again: the manager’s office, closed and dark, two other cars, neither one familiar, wet concrete, pools of water with gasoline stains glistening in the moonlight.

There is nothing. There is nobody there.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He closes the car door, locks it and reaches for Dean again, slides his arm under his brother’s shoulder. “Let’s go inside.” Dean lets himself be led, but his movements are a little more measured, a little tenser.

Sam almost falters on the steps to the room. The feeling hasn’t dissipated, and he needs to go in, he needs to get to shelter, he needs to _hide_ , he needs—

He’s barely inside the room when he realizes he should have run in the opposite direction.

The first punch gets him right in the solar plexus, and if that wasn’t enough, the punch hurts _before_ contact, jolts him like live wire a split-second before it connects.

He doesn’t even have the chance to draw breath before the second punch.


	5. Into the Light

When he comes to, they’re arguing.

Or rather, Dean is arguing. The other voice – soft, low, and terribly familiar – is quiet and calm.

“So what,” Dean is saying, voice blown and so angry it’s obvious he is barely holding it together. “There’s an arbitrary list of character traits, or did you just flip a coin?”

The other man in the room shuffles his feet. “It’s more complicated than that, Dean,” he says, and Sam can feel himself shattering to pieces.

The ropes hold him securely, his body twisted and _fused_ to the chair, his chin against his chest, the gag in his mouth tight and wet between his teeth. He doesn’t dare to raise his head, or else he thinks he might _die_ , burn right on the spot and just cease to exist.

“It’s subconscious,” says the other man in Sam’s voice, a cool, bored monotone. “You don’t really choose what to take out, you just...” He sighs. “Just read it, okay? I bookmarked it.”

There’s a pause, then a sound of heavy footsteps – Dean walking across the room. To the table by the window, Sam realizes. The silence stretches for a while.

“It’s Greek,” Dean says at last.

“There’s a translation at the bottom.”

Silence again. Slip-slide of fingertips against paper.

“That’s Bobby’s handwriting.”

Another brief pause, and Sam can feel the shrug – he can actually _feel_ it, like a pull in his own shoulders. He fights the slowly-rising panic. He is still afraid to raise his head, still afraid to look, to _confirm_.

“So?”

“So it’s _Bobby’s_ fucking handwriting.” Dean’s angry voice is back. There is a suggestion of knives behind it, and maybe a shotgun or two. “Did Bobby give you this?”

Uncomfortable silence, and then, “Not exactly.”

A longer pause, this time, and Sam can almost feel Dean’s disbelieving look, as if it were directed at him. In a way, he realizes somewhere in the back of his mind, it is.

Then, “You _lifted_ a book from Bobby? What the hell were you thinking?”

“It was on a pile, Dean. And it’s not like he doesn’t have dozens—”

“Dude, you’re missing my point. You fucking _lifted_ a fucking _spellbook_. From _Bobby_. Do you have any idea—”

“It’s a rite book.”

“—how fucking dangerous this thing could be? _Jesus_ , Sam!”

And there it is, Sam thinks, feeling empty laughter bubbling up from the bottom of his stomach. It mixes with panic somewhere along the way, and twists in a tight knot of _surreal_ and _absurd_ around his throat. He can barely breathe.

Dean is pacing now, footsteps going back and forth across the room, and Sam tries to calm down, inhales shallowly through his nose and tests the ropes again, slowly flexing and relaxing his muscles, a movement so small nobody should notice. The bonds are tied well, though, and he briefly wonders who did them.

“Would you please stop freaking out, Dean?” says Sam’s voice, only it’s not Sam’s voice. It _can’t be_. “It’s not dangerous. It’s just... very effective.”

“Effective?” Dean says. “You call _this_ effective?”

“It worked.”

“Yeah, sure it did. And he is what? _Fine print_?”

A long silence again. Dean has stopped pacing, and Sam can feel them stare at each other. He cracks one eye open – there is a chalked Devil’s Trap on the floor around him, and now he really wants to laugh.

This is a dream, he thinks. This is a fucking nightmare. I’m not really here.

“Sam,” Dean says, in a commanding voice, and it’s all Sam can do not to flinch.

_I’m not here._

“It’s a _cleansing_ ritual, Dean,” says the calm, terrible, _Sam_ voice. “A powerful one... And he’s... _It_ is... I’m guessing it’s a container.”

“He’s a human being, Sam.” Low. Dangerous.

It wasn’t Dean who pulled the ropes so tight.

“No, Dean. It’s not.” A sigh, like he’s explained that a thousand times, and the dumb older brother just doesn’t get it. “Look, I know it’s difficult to accept. But we’ve seen things like this more times than we can count, Dean. The shapeshifters, the tulpa, even that trickster could make people out of thin air. So it looks like me, acts like me. It doesn’t make it any more human. It’s just...” A pause, a creak of the chair, and Sam feels a shiver zigzag down his spine. His skin crawls again, and it’s getting even harder to breathe through the gag.

“It’s awake.”

“What? How do you know?”

Footsteps. Sam prepares himself for pain.

“I just... I can feel it. From a short distance. That’s how I found you here...”

Static, crackling in the air by his head. He can feel his hair moving, rising at the tips. He holds his breath.

And then a slap to his cheek, like an electrical jolt. He jerks his head up—

“ _Jesus_ , Sam...”

—and sees Dean’s frightened eyes, body tense in the middle of a step back, as if he were trying to remove himself from a possible blast radius.

And then Sam’s eyes focus, and he looks up into his own face.

“Howdy,” says Sam, the _other_ Sam—

—a Sam who seems weightless and radiant, like a reflection in a fairy-tale mirror, taken apart and put back from shining little pieces of light, each one perfect and flawless, and Sam – this, _here_ , bound-hand-and-feet Sam – is overwhelmed by a sudden, strong, reckless hunger: he wants to be that beautiful, luminous person, he wants to melt himself in him, lose himself in that brightness.

The other Sam hovers over him, one hand in the air, like he’s deciding where to hit next, and Sam – this, here, in-the-chair Sam – realizes, astonished, that he _wants_ that blow. He wants that electricity to touch him again.

He doesn’t understand it. It’s magic.

He finds himself grinning like a fool into the light of the other Sam; sees the twist of the mouth, the tensing of muscles—

“No.” Dean is there, holding back the brightness, a dark shadow of a bruised hand around the luminous wrist. “Stop it. Sam, come on.” He is tugging at the other Sam’s clothes, pulling him back and over to the chair by the window. He makes the other Sam sit, and keeps him there with a hold around his shoulders.

How can he even touch him, Sam-in-the-chair wonders in awe. How can he touch and not be burned?

“Sam, look at me,” Dean says. “We gotta fix this.”

Yes, Sam thinks, and he says, _Take me back_ , but he can’t speak clearly, and they don’t understand him.

The other Sam looks a little dazed, his mouth still twisted and his fists clenching and unclenching slowly, as if the blow he failed to deal was somehow still trapped in his hands, the electricity wanting to be let out.

Dean shakes him by the shoulders. “Sam. Focus, goddamnit!” And the other Sam blinks, relaxes – the tension gone in a split second.

He is still glowing, though, and Sam-in-the-chair finds himself transfixed. He can’t take his eyes away from that light.

Does Dean even see it?

“Okay,” says Dean. “Okay. Good. Now tell me, Sam: how do you reverse this?”

The other Sam frowns at him. “What?”

“How do you reverse this? How do you... get back to the way you were?”

The frown turns into incomprehension. They look at each other – Dean tense and wide-eyed and waiting, and the other Sam quiet and calm, but apparently completely lost in his brother’s logic. And then his eyes widen, too, and his expression matches Dean’s in an almost comical way.

“I don’t, Dean,” he says. “I can’t.” He grimaces, makes a move to free himself of his brother’s grip and Dean lets go, and backs off, eyes narrowing.

“You can’t? Or you won’t?”

He is distancing himself, Sam – this, _here_ Sam – realizes. It’s barely a step, but Dean is distancing himself, his body perhaps already aware of something Sam is feeling too – it creeps towards him slowly, but surely. His heart begins to pound again.

The other Sam glows.

“Dean, you don’t understand,” he says, slowly, the pained grimace still twisting his mouth. “That was the whole _point_. I rid myself of all the things that made me evil, and now there is no coming back. I can’t just—”

“That’s a load of crap, Sam. It can’t be that simple. No fucking way one spell would—”

“A ritual, Dean,” the other Sam says, standing up, and Dean flinches imperceptibly, but doesn’t take another step back. “A pretty fucking difficult ritual, at that. And with some ugly side effects, it’s true, and I’m sorry, but...” He steps closer to Dean, raises his hand and touches his brother’s bruised cheek. The touch glimmers. “But it worked. See? I’m here, I’m whole, and for the very first time in my _life_ , I feel safe, Dean. Like I don’t have to look over my shoulder, constantly afraid of what this demon might want from me. I feel like I can beat it. We can beat it together.”

Dean doesn’t say anything. The light is still caressing his cheek. It hovers over Dean’s skin, brings the swollen tissue and patches of caked blood and dirt into sharp relief.

For a moment it looks as if the bruises could heal from that touch alone; Sam finds himself wishing fiercely they would.

But they don't.

“Did he give you this?” the other Sam asks, quietly. He moves his hand to trace Dean’s jaw, gently turns Dean’s face to one side, then the other. “What else did he do to you, Dean?”

Dean is silent through the careful examination. He is not looking into his brother’s eyes.

At last the other Sam steps back. “We’ve got to finish this, Dean, you know that. And I can’t do this without you.”

Dean is motionless, seems rooted in place. His eyes are half-closed now, as though the light has blinded him, dazed him, made it impossible for him to say no.

Then he shakes himself, blinking. “Okay. _Jesus_. Okay.” He looks around the room, his gaze skittering over the beds, the floor, not really focusing on anything. He rubs his face, looks sideways at the glowing Sam. “What do you want me to do?”

It feels odd, Sam – this, _here_ , in-the-chair Sam – thinks, to be sentenced to death. He can see it already, in the lines of the other Sam’s body, in the hunch of Dean’s shoulders. They won’t let him go.

He feels hot all over. He feels weak.

He is blinded by the light he can see in the other Sam.

He is blinded by the touch they’ve just shared, by the connection he will never, _ever_ have, turns out he _never had_ in the first place.

The container had been empty, he realizes. He was trying to reach across the wall, and he couldn’t find anything, because there was _nothing there_. He stepped over a boundary to shock himself back into the context, risked everything and instead lost himself in a pointless chase after fake sense-memories, and all he got was vague notions and raw instinct.

All he got was what the other Sam wanted to be rid of.

He’s a garbage container, and he’s about to be treated like one.

“...use him,” the other Sam is saying, quietly, and only to Dean.

Dean is watching them both like a hawk, standing between, shielding the other Sam, _his_ Sam, from the abomination bound to the chair.

“The FBI is still after us,” says the other Sam, and Dean only nods.

“Somewhere remote,” says the other Sam, “but easy to find.”

Dean nods again, and doesn’t say anything.

*******

The car rumbles and creaks on the secluded back road. Dean’s profile is sharp in the diffused glow from the headlights, his mouth set, puffed with bruises. His hands are tight on the wheel, his ring catching and reflecting the faint light. He hasn’t looked in the rearview yet; maybe he doesn’t want to.

From the backseat, Sam watches him with his eyes half-closed. He has already thought about his chances of escape. If he managed to bust the rear side door, he might be able to run off into the woods. They’re not driving too fast now, and Dean is wounded – he wouldn’t be able to chase Sam too far, and if Sam didn’t break anything essential while jumping out, he might be able to get a long way away on adrenaline alone.

The problem is, Sam’s legs are tied, and when he first tried to straighten them, he discovered there was a rope going across his back, fastened to his ankles on one side and forming a loop around his neck on the other. He can’t even move much without strangling himself, much less try to break any doors.

He still suspects it wasn’t Dean who tied these knots, but it doesn’t really matter now.

They didn’t hesitate once the course of action had been chosen. Sam didn’t even have a chance to protest, or try to break out of his bonds – the other Sam moved fast, glowing afterimages fading in the air behind him, the electricity crackled and the blow was almost gentle, almost kind.

When Sam woke up, he was already in the backseat.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been out, but it feels awfully like wasted time – he could have been watching the world with open eyes, consciously breathing the air. Instead he lost precious minutes or maybe hours of his life on being knocked out. Not his fault, but couldn’t they have given him that, at least?

So many first times, he thinks, so many wasted hours. He flexes his wrists and remembers the waitress in the small diner by the road, on the first bright day of his life. A shard of glass, glimmering in her ear, her sunshine smile and Dean, soaking in it like it was honey, the elixir of life, everything he needed. _That tight-assed little brother I had. Don’t forget you could do this._

Sam didn’t forget.

The shape of Dean’s mouth, he didn’t forget that either. The shape, the _taste_ of Dean’s mouth, the moving pictures in the lines of his body, the way Sam tried to remember something that’s never been there. This blankness instead, this whole lot of nothing beneath that physical contact, the warm hand on the back of his neck just that: a warm hand.

Not a brother, turns out; not in any way you look at it. A blank page, a pawn with no sense of direction and no choice to get anywhere but here. An empty container with no natural defenses, with no family, no brother – only his soon-to-be executioner in the front seat, with his hands tight on the wheel and his mouth split open, his smile distorted by Sam’s fist.

 _Sam’s_. Now there’s a good joke. 

The car shudders, wheels jumping on some bump on the road, or maybe a root of a tree – there are dark branches against darker sky when Sam looks up and out of the rear window – and he realizes they’re slowing down.

They’re here; it’s the last stop.

This is _it_.

He has a moment of pause – like time, stopping just before the last drop of water splashes on the ground – and then the reality of what is about to happen hits him with full force. He starts struggling with the rope again, not even trying to keep quiet any more. He fights to calm his increasingly panicked breathing, because it _cannot end like this_. It’s unfair and terrifying and pointless, and he has barely just _begun_.

He can hear Dean shutting the driver’s door with a bang, the car frame shudders and Sam flinches even through the panic. The loop is getting tighter around his neck – is that a noose? Is he going to strangle himself accidentally before this is over, or was that the other Sam’s intention in the first place?

God, he can’t _breathe_.

Cool air sweeps his legs and Dean’s shadow hovers over the open door. There’s a glint of metal in the dark – the headlights are still on, Sam realizes, he can see the bruises on Dean’s face as clearly as in daylight, and in a strange multitude of colors. He can hear the ocean in his ears. Everything is amplified, stronger. He is beginning to choke.

“Gonna cut the rope,” Dean says, his voice rough and barely filtering through the sound of the crashing waves. “Just don’t kick me in the face, okay?”

The rope across Sam’s back snaps, the pressure on his throat lessens and he gulps in a breath. His legs slide forward uselessly, gravity pulling him to the floor between the back and the front seat, and he almost falls, but then there is a strong grip on his ankle, twisting and pulling, and he is wrenched back onto the seat.

“Come on out,” Dean says in a tight, commanding voice, and Sam laughs through the multicolored haze around his head, half-mad and half-disbelieving; he’s just realized one very important thing.

“Are you kidding?” he says, curling a little tighter around himself, trying to sink into the seat. He would chain himself to the door handle, if he could, or just claw into the leather and hold on.

Because – and ain’t that the best joke of them all? – he's pretty sure Dean won’t be able to do this if Sam is in the car.

He tries to say that, too, but his voice is shot, all air and wheezing breath. He’s not even certain if he managed to speak at all, so he starts laughing again instead – maybe Dean will get the message.

“Stop fucking around, man,” Dean says. “We don’t have all night. I need you to focus.”

He is still hiccupping helplessly when the meaning penetrates.

He stops laughing, squeezes his eyes shut for a moment to clear them, catches a quick breath. Then he peers at Dean over his bound wrists.

Dean is leaning on the open door, looking at Sam with a tired expression. Waiting.

Is that a trick? No way Sam is coming out of the car.

“Focus on what, Dean?” he says. “Assuming the most convenient position?”

Dean frowns at him. “Dude, what are you talking about?”

For a moment, they are both quiet.

And then Sam remembers the glow, the shadow of Dean’s hand against that luminous wrist, the way Dean stepped back, but never too far back.

The way Dean was standing between them, sheltering not only _his_ Sam, but shielding them both from _each other_.

On the other hand, the upholstery in this car must be quite expensive to replace.

“Oh, _man_ ,” Dean says, hanging his head. When he looks at Sam again, his expression is half-pained and half-angry. “Come on, Sam, did you really think I was gonna waste you? How stupid do you think I am?”

Sam doesn’t move. He is still trying to decide between the value of the upholstery and Dean’s vaguely unsettling body language. So far his estimations land smack in the middle of _I have no idea what the fuck is going on_.

“I’m not your brother,” he says, unsteadily, just so they are clear.

Dean looks at him in silence for a long moment. The patchwork of bruises makes the shadows on his face look grotesque and absurd, all in the wrong places. He is leaning against the door with his shoulders hunched and his body bent as if he is carrying a weight that is slowly turning out to be too much.

Finally he nods, once, and turns his head, hiding all of his face in shadow.

“I know,” he says quietly, like he is speaking only to himself. “But he’s not my brother either.”

*****

“Can you sense him?”

“What?”

“That’s why I need you to focus. He said he could sense you from a distance. Does it work the other way around?”

They are sitting in the front seat of the car, and Sam can’t help but feel absurdly happy: it’s not only that he just managed to escape with his life – he also gets to sit next to Dean in the front seat as if he deserves it, as if they are _brothers_.

He focuses obediently, tries to find any traces of something from the other Sam – the glow, maybe, or an echo of a thought – but he gets nothing. He tries that for a while, and then shakes his head. “No. Sorry.”

Dean sighs. “Yeah. Figures he’d keep that one to himself.” He looks around. They’re in the dead of the woods, somewhere far off the highway. Sam can’t see any other lights but theirs.

“I think we’re far enough,” Dean says. He looks over at Sam. “Or I can always clock you one so he doesn’t know if you’re dead or just out of it.”

Sam stiffens at that, but Dean is already smiling. “Relax, dude, I’m joking.” He pats Sam on the knee a few times, then lets his touch linger, not holding, but _keeping Sam in place_. When Sam looks up, Dean is serious again. “We still need to fix this, Sam.”

Dean’s eyes are dark and intense. Sam nods, but Dean doesn’t let go of his knee. The touch is not reassuring any more.

“I need to know,” Dean says slowly, “if you’re going to have a problem with that.”

Sam thinks about it, but he is shaking his head even before he consciously realizes he’s doing it.  
He remembers the glow, and his need to be as close to it as possible. It seems almost unreal now, and maybe also completely insane, but he knows that’s what he wants. His other choice is to be left in the dark, and even though he might be able to sit beside Dean, talk to him, _be_ with him, he won’t ever be able to find the real connection, the one he saw just for one brief moment between Dean and the other Sam. The Sam, who, despite the missing pieces, was still more, still _better_ than him.

“No problem,” he says, quietly.

Dean looks at him for a while, eyes searching, before he briefly squeezes Sam’s knee and takes his hand away, starts digging in his front jacket pocket. He fishes out a cell phone, flips through the list of calls. It doesn’t look like Dean’s phone, Sam realizes, and wonders when Dean got a hold of it, and if the other Sam noticed.

“Huh,” Dean says after a moment.

“What?”

Dean is staring at the phone. He doesn’t say anything for a while, and then shakes himself. “Nothing.” And he presses redial.

The person on the other end picks up after the first ring.

“Bobby.” Dean’s smile is generous and real, even with the tension around his eyes. “Yeah, I’m okay. Listen, Bobby, I hear you’re missing a book.”

*****

Dean leaves him in the woods for a few long, cold hours. Before he goes, he tosses Sam his Zippo, a small kerosene canister and a couple of blankets, tells him to make a fire and hole up for the rest of the night, wait for him.

When he comes back, the sun is beginning to glow faint blue and green on the horizon, the fire has died down, and Sam is sitting on the ground in the huddle of blankets, dozing off and waking up to his own shivers.

They make a circle, with crushed chalk and sticks in the mud. It’s quite simple, and Sam figures that’s how he – or the Sam from before – managed to hide the ritual from Dean in the first place. It doesn’t require much. The most important thing is the book.

That, and the unconscious body Dean drags out from the back seat.

Sam appreciates the irony from afar – he won’t touch the other Sam, even though he really wants to. He is exhausted and weak, and he thinks the electricity would probably knock him out on the spot.

When the other Sam is within the circle, Dean corrects the chalk line, digs out the book and, flashlight in hand, squints at the translation.

He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and Sam is beginning to shiver again. He is standing outside the circle, rubbing his shoulders, watching the other Sam glow faintly in the early dawn light. He is bone-tired, swaying on his feet. The glow of the other Sam pulls him towards the circle in slow, delicious waves, just under his skin.

Off to the side Dean shifts, clears his throat. “Man, I don’t like this.”

Sam blinks and looks up, stops rubbing his shoulders. “What?” He doesn’t understand. It doesn’t make sense that _Dean_ should be the one to flip out. Not right now, not after he’s gone to all the trouble of dragging the other Sam here. “Dean?”

“I just...” Dean says, grimaces, bites his lip. “It just doesn’t sound right, okay? I mean, come on, Sam, ‘walk into the light’? Who the hell even wrote this shit?”

Sam smiles. He can’t help it. It sounds almost endearing, the way Dean says one thing and means something entirely different. Sam thinks he could get used to that, after all, even if it’s terribly annoying on a daily basis.

“Dean,” he says seriously. “I’m not gonna die.”

Dean doesn’t look convinced. He steps from one foot to the other, sighs, looks at the motionless body on the ground, rubs his temple with the butt of his flashlight, sighs again.

“Dean,” Sam says quietly, softly. “Just start reading.”

And at last, Dean does.

The glow around the Sam in the circle starts expanding with the first words that fall from Dean’s mouth, but Dean obviously doesn’t see it. He keeps reading, eyes firmly on the text, the flashlight tracking the paragraphs, and Sam feels the pull from inside the circle in every cell of his body. He starts moving, slowly at first, so Dean doesn’t notice; and then, when Dean’s voice doesn’t falter and he is sure Dean won’t stop reading and drag him away, Sam puts one foot over the chalk line, smiles at Dean – smiles at his _brother_ – and steps into the light.


	6. Bookends

When he opens his eyes, he can’t find himself, and his brain shuts down before he can check if he’s even still breathing.

*****

When he opens his eyes again, he is divided.

It’s night, he digs himself out of the rubble, Dean digs him out of the rubble; they drive, the road is empty and dark and he is cold, so cold, he runs along the empty highway, waves at the passing cars; sleeps in a ditch, sleeps to the sound of the blaring music; Dean’s fingers slide over the weapons, Dean’s t-shirt stretches across his wet shoulders, Dean’s phone goes to voicemail every single time; he is lost, he is alone, his face is unfamiliar, scars on his cheek, _I’m not your brother_.

Bobby answers after the second ring. _Yes, he called. He’s headed for Washington. Are you two fighting again?_

In a motel diner, he fantasizes about killing a young woman.

In a parking lot, he hotwires a car.

In Washington, he kisses his brother.

**~**

Warmth around him, beside him, over him; inside him nausea and shivers. A rattling bed frame, skull-cracking pain, a squeezing pressure on his shoulders, sour breath on his face.

“Jesus, Sammy, don’t make me chain you to the freaking bed...”

He breathes, and falls back in.

**~**

In Washington, he watches himself glow, he watches this other person glow, this other person sitting shoulder to shoulder with _his brother_ in the front seat of the Impala, both of them bent over a newspaper or a map, talking over the music, and he hates this person, he hates himself more than he ever hated anything else.

In Washington, he waits until nightfall and picks the lock to their room. Touches the tousled sheets on the empty beds. Touches himself, waiting. Glass-crystal need.

In Washington, blind, he separates the pieces of a living nightmare until it’s broken and dead at his feet.

In Washington, blind, he chases a phantom of a memory and beats his brother into a pulp.

**~**

“Here. Shhh, here. C’mon, Sam. Open up.”

In the dark, he keeps his mouth shut against the insistent fingers.

“Sam, come on, man, you gotta drink... Oh _Jesus_ fuck, not _again_...”

In the dark, he coils around himself and coughs up burning acid.

**~**

He is Sam in the chair, he is Sam at the table, he tightens the ropes and he feels them cut into his wrists. He ties the gag, feels it rough and wet between his teeth, he electrocutes himself and he wants to be electrocuted again. He sees himself glow like he’s some avenging angel come to vanquish the demon, while in truth he is just a reflection in a skewed mirror from a horror fairy-tale, taken apart and put back together wrong, he is glowing and wanting and hating himself, and he is Sam in the chair and Sam at the table, he is both, he is neither, and still he is only Sam.

Guilty of nothing but the desire to feel safe he sentences himself to death by his brother’s hands.

**~**

He doesn’t dream about the demon. With open eyes, he dreams about himself. He separates the pieces of his living nightmare, digs deeper—

And comes out empty-handed on the other side.

**~**

When he opens his eyes, he is blind again.

“Shh.” Something touches his face. Fingertips on a blindfold. “You’re safe, Sammy. You’re okay.”

Warmth behind him, a body, spooned close, knees touching the backs of his thighs. An arm under his neck.

“But you puke in daylight, so I hoped you wouldn’t mind.”

Sheets around him, soft and thin and drenched. The smell of his own stale sweat. Acid and alcohol.

“You awake now? You want something to drink?”

The body behind him. His brother. Movement. Drawing back.

 _Stay_.

His voice doesn’t come. Only his mouth opens. Useless.

“You want me to stay?”

 _Yes_.

“You gonna sleep again?”

 _Yes_.

“Want me to read you a bedtime story?”

He smiles. Doesn’t try to speak. Breathes quietly, slowly, and lets the world come back to him instead.

*******

They wait a few more days before driving back to Bobby’s. When they finally get back on the road, Dean’s bruises have faded to soft, mud-colored rainbows around his mouth and under his eyes. Sam still doesn’t react well to daylight, so they drive after sunset, and Dean, predictably, just can’t leave it alone. Sam’s had enough vampire jokes for the rest of his life, and then some.

“So, is it all of you in there?” Dean asked, that first night after the three days from hell, when Sam opened his mouth and managed to actually make a sound. “’Cause if there’s a third one of you running somewhere out there, man, it’s gonna be a bitch to hunt that sucker down.”

Sam sat propped against the headboard, drinking water through a straw. “Yes, Dean. It’s me. All of me. You can quiz me, if you want.”

But Dean didn’t, and Sam understood why. Three days of cleaning up after Sam, making sure he didn’t suffocate himself or break his neck falling out of the bed; three days of not sleeping, not knowing – just drinking and waiting and smashing bottles against the motel room wall; three days of watching out in case the FBI had been tracking Dean’s almost maxed-out fake credit card – in spite of what Dean often said about himself, he wasn’t indestructible, and he needed rest as much as the next man.

Still, an odd question would come wrapped in a joke, and Sam pretended he didn’t notice.

“Remember that freebie you had? After the business with that vampire chick, what’s-her-face...”

“Lenore.”

“Yep, that one. Well, you don’t have it. I’m taking it back.”

“Yeah, Dean. I figured.”

It’s way after midnight when they arrive at Bobby’s, but the lights are still on around the house. A couple of new dogs bark at them when they make a turn around the driveway, Dean pointing the car back towards the entry gate.

Bobby greets them on the doorstep, sans shotgun, but with beer and crackers. They sit at the kitchen table, and in the harsh light of the single overhead lamp Dean’s bruises are somehow more pronounced. Bobby doesn’t say anything about it, but they don’t share a toast, just drink for a while in silence.

“What, no holy water this time?” Dean says at last, smiling crookedly and shaking his bottle. He’s already downed half of it.

“Like you would know,” Bobby says, lightly, but he is watching Sam.

They didn’t come here for small talk.

“I’ll go get the book,” Sam murmurs at last, sets his beer back on the table and goes outside.

The night is clear and cool. It rained on their way here, but now the clouds have moved on, and there is a thin, pale moon rising. The dogs bark half-heartedly at Sam and then go back to sleep.

Sam opens the trunk and digs the book out from under a new bag of rock salt Dean bought on the way. He holds the tome in his hands. It’s light, like the words and symbols inside it weigh nothing. He remembers the first time he opened it, too curious for his own good, and the second time he did, desperate and hopeful and too scared to stop.

He tucks the book under his arm, closes and locks the trunk and goes back inside the house.

Dean and Bobby are sitting quietly at the table, not looking at each other, but Sam knows there was a conversation there, just a moment before, one he wasn’t meant to hear. He walks to the table without a word, lays the book in front of Bobby, and doesn’t sit.

Dean takes it as his cue, stands up. “Thanks for everything, Bobby.” Bobby stands up with him, they shake hands, and Dean turns to leave. Sam still doesn’t move. Bobby doesn’t seem surprised. They both wait.

When the door closes behind his brother, Sam says the only thing he can think of, “I’m sorry.”

Bobby nods, but doesn’t say anything. He takes the book from the table, walks over to the far wall and slides the tome into an empty slot between other books on a high, dusty shelf. It fits there perfectly, disappearing among other, almost identical leather covers.

Sam stares at it, frowning.

“Bobby?”

Bobby turns to him. His face is open and friendly, as always, but his eyes are hard and unrelenting.

Sam clears his throat. “Bobby, that book... It wasn’t over there when I... when I took it.”

Bobby nods again, the acknowledgement barely there, and that’s when Sam remembers that Bobby is not only their friend – he is first and foremost a hunter. A better and more experienced hunter than their dad ever was, and, judging by the fact that he is still alive, one of the best in the business.

“Did its job, didn’t it?” Bobby says, and his look is sharp, piercing; daring Sam to do anything but agree.

Sam’s hand travels to the charm around his neck. _His_ charm. He gave the other charm back to Dean when he woke up with both of them around his neck.

“That trinket’s worth nothing if you’re not smart enough to protect yourself,” Bobby says. “And you’re a bit smarter now, aren’t you?”

Sam’s legs feel weak. Did Dean know about this? _Should_ he know?

He suspects Dean wouldn’t shake Bobby’s hand if he knew. Quite the opposite, in fact – Dean would come back in here, guns blazing, and then they would continue the noble Winchester tradition of being driven out of Bobby’s house at the point of a shotgun.

It’s difficult to move, the air thick and heavy like tar, the humidity pressing down on his shoulders. Bobby is still looking at him, waiting.

Sam summons all the strength he has left, swallows, finds his voice. “Yes, sir,” he says, and then turns around and leaves, closing the door carefully behind him. He doesn’t stumble on the steps of Bobby’s front porch.

The moonlight outside is thin and soft, the shadows in the darkness barely defined, black and grey shapes around Sam, around the house, around the front yard.

In the driveway, his brother is waiting for him in the car.


End file.
